The Game Read online

  Praise for The Six

  ‘A fantastic read’

  Mark Billingham

  ‘High-concept serial killer thriller with twists and heart. Stunning’

  Steve Cavanagh

  ‘A fast-paced mystery about friendships, secrets and fears with a twist in the tail that fooled me completely’

  Chris Ewan

  Praise for The Bone Keeper

  ‘The Bone Keeper will corrupt your days and shatter your nights’

  Val McDermid

  ‘Luca Veste proves you don’t need to go to the Bayou or the Everglades to find something terrifying in the deep, dark woods… An entertainingly nasty piece of work’

  Christopher Brookmyre

  ‘Candyman meets The Silence of the Lambs’

  Eva Dolan

  ‘Urban legend meets serial killer thriller – a terrifying book that walks the line between crime and horror, not unlike Thomas Harris’s best work’

  Stuart Neville

  Praise for Then She Was Gone

  ‘A page-turner’

  Sunday Times Crime Club

  ‘Luca Veste’s Murphy and Rossi series hits the very pinnacle of modern crime fiction. Totally compelling’

  Steve Cavanagh

  ‘Socially incisive, emotionally fraught and utterly gripping, Then She Was Gone is another triumph’

  Eva Dolan

  ‘Murphy and Rossi’s Liverpool is as dark as the Mersey… Veste’s grip on social issues remains bang on the money, it’s all tied up in a breathtaking and satisfying plot’

  Nick Quantrill

  Praise for Bloodstream, Dead Gone and The Dying Place

  ‘This is a twisty, psychological crime debut in a gritty setting: a new favourite for police procedural lovers’

  Clare Mackintosh

  ‘Top read for police-procedural aficionados looking for a fresh beat’

  Sunday Times Crime Club

  ‘A darkly impressive first novel, disturbing and intelligent’

  The Times

  ‘A chilling debut from a writer to watch’

  Mark Billingham

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  For my fellow Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers – Mark, Chris, Doug, Val and Stuart. Can’t wait to get back on stage with you all – as long as it’s big enough for me to fit on.

  NOW

  One

  The First Interview

  Tuesday 30th October

  Interview Room One

  Lancaster Police Station – sixty miles from Liverpool City Centre

  He settled in the plastic chair, feeling an itch grow under the cuff of the prison-issue jumper on his wrist. He could sense the fabric against his skin, its coarseness grating against the indentations left by the handcuffs which had been removed a few hours earlier. They’d taken his clothes as soon as they’d reached the station. Bagging them up carefully, as if they might bite.

  ‘This interview is being recorded both visually and audibly. Investigating officers are Detective Inspector Patrick Hicks and Detective Sergeant Victoria Lee.’

  He didn’t look up at them, staring at the marks and stains on the table in front of him. Making patterns in the random smears.

  He knew he looked uninterested to the cameras pointed in his direction. As if he did this every day, a normal occurrence in his life.

  Inside, his heart was beating hard against his chest. Outside, he remained cool. Aloof. Calm.

  They asked for his name again. They had been doing that regularly since he’d arrived. He’d shaken his head and declined to answer. That way, they would spend more time trying to work that out than questioning anything else. And without a name, they wouldn’t get very far.

  All part of the plan. What there was of it, anyway.

  He wasn’t going to give them anything easily. He was there for one reason and one reason only.

  When they’d offered a solicitor, he’d shrugged his shoulders. They’d taken that as an acceptance. The solicitor was now sitting close to him, tensing up with every word he said that wasn’t ‘no comment’, a folder full of notes balanced on his knees. A weedy little thing, who looked like a strong wind would blow him over. He wouldn’t be required.

  He was ready to tell them what he wanted them to know.

  ‘You have been arrested on suspicion of the murder…’ the DI said to him, the words coming through a fog of coffee-scented breath that made him wrinkle his nose in disgust. The guy kept talking, but he wasn’t listening anymore. Simply waiting for his turn to talk.

  ‘I did it. I killed them all.’

  A shared look between the detectives. A shuffle of papers and a throat-clearing from the solicitor. Trying to get his attention. Stop him talking. Do as he had been told. Say the things that would give him a chance of a defence when they got to court.

  There was no chance of that happening.

  ‘All?’

  ‘I’m the one.’

  ‘You’re the one what?’ DI Hicks said, a crease forming across his forehead, as his eyes scanned his notes and then shot back to him.

  ‘I’m the man you’ve been looking for. Eight people dead. I killed them all.’

  He could feel the atmosphere between them shift a little, as the detectives slowly began to understand what he’d said.

  ‘You’re saying you’ve killed eight people?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who are the eight people?’

  ‘What do you need to hear?’ he said, wondering how his voice would sound on the recording. Whether it would resonate with someone listening back later. Whether they would read into what he was saying and make assumptions. Psychoanalyse him in sensationalised documentaries. They would call him evil. A psychopath. Wicked and immoral. Mad or bad. As if those two words were interchangeable.

  That wasn’t the truth. He was just like everyone else in that room.

  He was just human.

  ‘Why don’t you tell us about the woman you were found with,’ DI Hicks said finally, locking eyes with him. He knew it was an attempt to regain control, but it would fail. He’d had them on the back foot from the start. That had been the plan. The game. ‘The young woman. What was her name?’

  ‘She’s not important right now. If I’m going to tell you everything, I need to start at the beginning.’

  ‘And when was that?’

  He saw the names of the victims as if they were folders in a filing cabinet. Each one filled with facts and figures. ‘Steven Hallet,’ he repeated, thinking of the young man who had been killed first. He closed his eyes, remembering the facts. ‘Twenty-two years old. I killed him at a service station on the M6 in the middle of the night, not far from here actually. I made him play. He was doing… bad things. I killed him because he lost. He was my first.’

  There was another shared look between the detectives. He glanced at the solicitor, who was furiously making notes, his handwriting becoming more scrawled the further down the page it went. His hand was shaking every time the pen left the page.

  ‘You’re saying you killed Steven Hallet?’

  It took a few moments, but he could see the pair starting to regain their composure. Making quick decisions without even talking to each other. He knew this could have been a tricky part. That they might have ended the interview there and then and gone outside to regroup. Perhaps pull in other detectives who knew the case better. Instead, they’d obviously decided while he was talk
ing that it was best not to stop him.

  That was the first hurdle cleared.

  He knew there were bigger hurdles than this one. That they would need to try to explain his very existence. He wasn’t there for that. He hoped it wouldn’t happen.

  ‘You assert you killed Steven Hallet and… what was it… seven further victims?’

  ‘Well, yes. Eight is the right number. All told.’

  ‘And the girl you were found with was number eight?’

  He thought for a second, then nodded. ‘Yes, but I need to talk about Steven first.’

  ‘We’ll get to that.’

  He watched DI Hicks clench his jaw, saw the thoughts running through his mind. His need, his desire, to reach across the table and lay his hands on him. The anger danced across the detective’s eyes for a moment, before he remembered his place.

  ‘The woman you were found with… what was her name?’ More aggressive in tone now.

  He wanted to lie on the table. Close his eyes and sleep, but he knew it would be a long time until he would be able to rest. Perhaps he never would again, now he was unburdening himself. The solicitor beside him had gone still, seemingly wanting to hear the rest of the story himself. When he’d met him earlier, he had been advised to say nothing. To answer ‘no comment’ to all of their questions, while they came up with a statement for the situation which would be put before him. He hadn’t engaged the lawyer in much conversation.

  He’d been too busy preparing.

  Remembering.

  ‘I’ll tell you what you need to know, in the order I want to tell you, or I don’t say another word. I know you want to keep control of this interview, but that’s not how this will go. Understand?’

  He would have enjoyed the look of wounded pride that flashed across Hicks’s face in any other environment, but for now, he could only try to keep the little food he’d eaten that morning from making a reappearance. No room for error. No room to show nerves.

  Another moment passed and then Hicks asked him to continue at his own pace.

  ‘I killed Stacey Green after Steven Hallet. Found her a different way. She was trying to be found, I think. This time I didn’t make the same mistakes I did with Steven. It was cleaner. I did it differently, but you know the story, or you’ll find out soon enough. In fact, you’ll know how I killed all eight of them if you look properly. That’s if you want to know. I can tell you about them all. How they failed. After Stacey, there was Andrew Hill. Then, Melissa Carmichael…’

  ‘We want to hear about all of them, but first, we do need to talk about the woman you were found with,’ DS Victoria Lee said, the younger of the pair speaking for the first time since the recording had begun. ‘We want to hear your story.’

  ‘There is no story,’ he replied, leaning back in the plastic chair, wondering if the detectives had ever sat opposite a serial killer before. Whether they would be able to tell a difference between him or anyone else. ‘Just a list of names. People who have lost. You know, it’s amazing what people will believe when they have nothing else. If your life is empty, you’re easy to… manipulate.’

  A frown, a pause. A look of incredulity from the detective who had probably never interviewed someone like him. It passed quickly.

  ‘Okay, let’s move forward a little. You were found in the early hours of today, in a lock-up garage. Can you tell us what you were doing there?’

  He almost laughed. Almost. It was ridiculous. The entire line of questioning. He hadn’t expected it to be like this. Not at all. They kept returning to safe ground. They couldn’t handle what he was telling them. He’d just told them he’d killed eight people, yet they seemed to want to ignore that and keep going back to who he had been found with. Safer, more pertinent, he guessed.

  He would have done it differently if someone like him was sitting there. Waiting. He would ask better questions. Maybe that’s why he wasn’t sitting where DI Hicks was. Or DS Lee. Maybe that’s why he was sitting on the other side of the table instead. Just because he’d been brought there.

  Chosen to be.

  ‘You found me next to a dead body. Why do you think I was there?’

  ‘Who was she?’

  ‘I suppose it doesn’t matter all that much, now I think about it. She was just another player.’

  ‘And what happened to her?’

  He scratched at his left wrist finally, ignoring the bite of pain which responded to his touch. Glanced up at the camera once again.

  ‘Why don’t you tell us,’ DI Hicks said, unable to keep the irritation out of his tone, ‘what happened to her?’

  He almost laughed at the utter absurdity of it all. There was only one answer he could give them. He cleared his throat and looked DI Hicks in the eye for the first time. ‘It’s simple. She played The Game and lost.’

  BEFORE

  Two

  Status: Live

  Likes: Eighteen

  POST TITLE – NEW GAME

  These are the new players.

  Remember the names.

  Let’s watch them play.

  If you have any ideas for levels, please post them below.

  This is going to be fun!

  REMEMBER THE RULES

  Only two players at one time.

  They are never referred to by name – they are always Player One and Player Two.

  No one talks about this place.

  No one talks about what we decide here.

  The Game is all that matters.

  PLAYER ONE

  She wasn’t the first.

  The voice on the phone had told her so.

  The way it had said her name. Joanna.

  At first, she had wanted to ignore it. Pretend it wasn’t happening. That she hadn’t been found out.

  How did they find out?

  One more level.

  That’s all she had to complete. Then it would be all over. She could get back to her life and try to make it somewhat normal.

  No one would know what she had done.

  No one would know what she’d had to do to hide it. Protect herself.

  ‘I didn’t mean to do it,’ she had pleaded to the voice on her phone, the first time they had called. ‘I wasn’t thinking, I’m sorry.’

  She had to carry out tasks. Like levels in a video game, the voice had explained. She had to complete a level, then she would move on to the next. She couldn’t skip past, she had to keep going until she reached the end.

  Once it was completed, this would all be over. That was the promise. She could go back to her normal life, with no further contact. Everything would be erased and she could forget about it all.

  If she didn’t play, then she would be exposed. It was as simple as that.

  She had felt a lump grow at the back of her throat as she’d begged.

  She hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone. This was the wake-up call she’d needed. Now, she could do as she was told and not look back.

  She was on Level Five. Level One had been easy. Level Three had been difficult, but Level Five seemed easy enough. Just weird. Remembering a specific pattern of numbers, movements.

  She was standing outside the lift, her back against the wall that bordered the small room where she had lived for over a year now. Waiting. Excitement building as she thought about the finality of it.

  The final level.

  ‘You play to the end and it’s all over. They’ll never know what you’ve done,’ the voice had said, then the line was dead. Joanna looked at her phone now, for the last time, then chucked it through the open door onto her bed, and closed the door.

  She entered the lift. A grimace played across her lips, as she imagined someone watching this all back. Up in the corner of the lift, a familiar black globe looked down on her, recording her every moment. The bottle of cheap white wine she’d drunk to quieten her nerves swished and swirled around her stomach. She leaned over and whispered numbers to herself, pressing buttons on the control pad. As the lift ascended, her tummy lurched, as if s
he were in a car going over a hill at speed. She blinked and steadied herself with one hand once the lift stopped, then spoke the numbers louder. The second time, her body was ready and the nausea wasn’t as bad.

  Ten minutes later, she was walking down the corridor. Her head was still spinning a little from the ride up and down the building, the sound of her shoes on the hard floor echoing around her.

  So close to finishing now.

  No second thoughts.

  There was no other way. They knew everything.

  She had to play and that was it.

  As the lift ascended and descended, as she stepped in and out, struggling to remember each step properly, she didn’t yet sense the shift of weight around her.

  Didn’t sense anyone watching.

  As she stepped out for the final time, she didn’t notice anything other than…

  A noise made her pause.

  A shift of weight, of breath that wasn’t hers.

  She turned, expecting to see someone from one of the other apartments – the students who never spoke to her, never made any effort – finally coming to invite her to one of the parties she always heard. Or to tell her that everyone had grown tired of ignoring her and she was now the centre of attention. Would never be alone again.

  But the passageway was empty behind her.

  Only a few more steps remained between her and the turn in the hallway ahead, where she would find the access door to the roof. The final part of the journey in The Game.

  She cocked her head, waiting to hear the noise again. Silence surrounded her, almost suffocating in its weight.

  There was something about being alone that made you believe in the impossible, with thoughts your only companion. She could lose hours alone, even when mildly pissed and wandering through the halls of the fancy block of flats they passed off as Luxury Student Accommodation.

  Alone.

  On your own.

  As she always had been, when it came down to it.

  The lights above her seemed to dim as she continued to walk.

  Determined now to see it through. To move on from all that her past held. To forget. To erase.